Uzumaki

Episode 4

Hi everybody, sorry for the delay on this last spin in the Uzumaki spiral—every time I thought about closing out this haphazard disaster of an adaptation, I turned into a snail. In fact, I still am one right now and my husband is very annoyed with how often he has to mop the floors now. Whoops.

By now, most of you have seen the infamous sliding .png from this episode.

This might make you less inclined to believe me, but episode four is a general improvement over episodes two and three without reaching the visual highlights of episode one. The above shot is the most egregious in its entire run-time but isn't indicative of how it looks as a whole. The character designs are simplified, the walk cycles are at times little more than bobbing heads, and everything involving the tornado gang looks like ass. However, this is passable in no small part because the narrative is far more focused.

Episode four introduces newscaster Chie, the only surviving member of a news team heading to Kurozou-cho to find out what's going on. The town is in ruins. The slightest disturbances summon whirlwinds and lay siege to the town. A gang of delinquents have figured out how to "ride" the winds and take pleasure in destroying any remaining structures. The only safe places left are row houses built near Dragonfly Pond, itself a giant whirlpool. People creep among the debris in search of refuge before transforming into giant snails.

The sound design remains the most effectively disturbing element of this mini-series as we're greeted with a barrage of slurping and mouth-smacking as the surviving townspeople turn on their snail-brethren as a source of sustenance. My skin crawled as one the wayward investigators wriggled his way inside his former colleague's snail shell to wolf down his flesh raw. Even when the visuals are less than promised, a passable visual presentation can be elevated when its other elements support it.

The background art, specifically when Kirie, Chie, Shuichi, and Mitsuo attempt to escape via the mountain, was some of the best we've seen since Uzumaki's debut. The corkscrew trees and tightly-bound fiddleheads were exceptionally done.

The episode's plot can feel plodding; we're watching Kirie and her cohorts wander around the ruins of town for most of it except their futile trip into the mountain. This section also serves as the first time-jump, as the crew emerges from the excursion without Mitsuo to discover Kurozou-cho has rebuilt itself into a giant spiral rowhouse populated by humanoid masses that constantly rebuild the structure. This is where Chie exists in a somewhat laughable scene as she fails to escape a rowhouse before the exit is boarded up by its inhabitants. Kirie and Shuichi sweat a bit and then move on; no one has time in Uzumaki to be deeply affected by anything that happens to their friends or colleagues.

The episode wraps with the big reveal that Kurozou-cho is built over a mysterious, likely ancient entity and is doomed to repeat its spiral-fixated curse whenever it becomes modernized again. The former inhabitants all perish, leaving no one behind to warn the next generation. Other sites made some hubbub about the post-credit scene showing the next Shuichi-Kirie couple and how it "recontextualizes" everything. Not to poo-poo on the lore-obsessed out there, but confirmation that the spiral curse repeats itself is hardly revolutionary. It's baked into the imagery.

Uzumaki, unfortunately, continues the trend of embarrassing attempts to bring Junji Ito's work to the screen. I'm still not sure what the right call would be, but I'm leaning toward the boilerplate, "This was canceled due to unforeseen production circumstances," that we've seen in this industry if for no other reason than to save face.

While each project is created under its own specific circumstances, I can no longer ignore the batting average for the Adult Swim x Production I.G. USA, which is dismal. The partnership thus far has given us Housing Complex C (it was bad), the FLCL sequels which, at least according to Anno, the rights were sold out from under Khara by Gainax (it's worth noting, though, that director Kazuya Tsurumaki is credited as "supervisor" for Progressive and Alternative) and resulted into four series of quality varying from "passably good" to "an eye sore," the forgettable Ninja Kamui, a series that completely misunderstands Blade Runner, the frustrating Fena: Pirate Princess that completely whiffs its ending, and a mostly good Shenmue tie-in.

Many of the above-listed series aren't streaming on Adult Swim anymore due to what Jason DeMarco characterized as a "write-off." Something isn't working when production issues plague promising series, and the ones that come out visually unscathed are narrative duds. How much brand damage can Adult Swim/Toonami weather in the anime space?

By all accounts, there is a version of Uzumaki that would have worked, but it's unlikely to ever exist. The best I can hope is that Nagahama got to try out some neat tech before the project spiraled out of control.

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Uzumaki is aired on Adult Swim and is streaming on Max.